Celebrating Shakespeare

  I glimpsed her through the exact frame of ferns that you imagine— algae’ed sludge-water sucked at my ankles when I leaned forward. Bog-stink makes people like you wince, no matter how shallowly you try to inhale, but biodegradation’s smell … Continue reading →

The play opens, famously, with a storm. We are in the midst of it, and we know only that a boat is shattering on a violent sea and men are shouting. Tempest-tossed, lost and frightened, these characters seem far from … Continue reading →

These resinous fields stretch away from my prison, rosined by wind and tendrils of my daughter’s hair, as she grows more beautiful. Nacre—that shine upon the mollusk when it’s washed ashore to die at my feet, another sign come to … Continue reading →

You would think the drowning girl would save herself but she’s not drowning in Millais’s bath water— she’s a twenty-two-year-old model posing as Ophelia in winter, and has put all of her worries on a shelf to float in his … Continue reading →

If it assume my noble father’s person, I’ll speak to it though hell itself should gape And bid me hold my peace. — Hamlet, 1.2 I’d give up everything I got to have my dad back. — Dale Earnhardt Sr. … Continue reading →

Ingénue She was Hero to his Claudio that season, and what a season to remember. Olivia could still recall when she first met the actor who’d been cast as her opposite; he had all the dazzle and verve that a … Continue reading →

I Hamlet’s most enduring relationship is with the sense-making absurdist Yorick the Fool, dead 23 years. As a boy, Hamlet rode joyfully upon Yorick’s back, his young head raised heavenward. Now the wistful adult Hamlet, kneeling by Yorick’s unearthed grave, raises Yorick’s head upward, … Continue reading →